A Model City - drdharchitects

I found this ceramic installation while I was researching for my summer project this year. London studio drdharchitects exhibited a miniature city made of clay, as part of the 2009 Shenzhen & HongKong bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture.

Five hundred children from local schools in Shenzen took part in workshops across the city. Each child was given a clay block with the proportions of a brick and asked to decorate it with windows and doors. Each model house was inscribed with a code on the base and coated in an ivory white glaze, before it was positioned on a white felt grid, laid out by the children.

Here is what drdharchitects say about the project:

“We wanted to engage local school children in imagining their own city. The process started by asking them to think about their home, through building a collection of miniature clay houses. We asked them a series of questions such as where an entrance or window might be; how these played a part in defining the overall appearance of their buildings and how it might speak to its neighbours. It concluded by asking them to consider the individual house as part of the collective city, how it might be laid out, its patterns and the relationships between things.”

Find out more, at drdharchitects.